The Touch Of Twilight (2 page)

“Maybe.” She shrugged but it was jagged. She was fighting not to inch backward. “But then I’d have to spill your little secret.”

“You mean reveal my Olivia identity to Ben? Or to the Tulpa?” I scoffed, though I knew the leader of the Shadow organization would offer a hefty reward to anyone who could do just that. “It’s an empty threat, and you know it. You’re too fond of the power and options that knowledge gives you.”

“I take a certain pleasure from it, true.” And she did step back, back and around to observe me again through the lasso-fringed mirror. “But I’m weary of glancing over my shoulder every time I visit the restroom. I want you to back off for good, and stop planting those fucking listening devices all around his house, or else Ben is going to learn of yet another secret his erstwhile ex has kept from him all these years.” And then she mouthed a single, shocking word at me through the glass.

Ashlyn.

It changed everything. I’d have been less surprised if the floor had dropped from beneath me. Only one person could’ve given Regan that name, but I thought I’d killed him before he told anyone about my daughter.
Ben’s
daughter.

Enjoying my reaction, Regan smiled. “Back off now, and I won’t tell the Tulpa he has a granddaughter either. One that is of the Light.” She laughed at the irony in her hoarded secret. The leader of the Shadows, a grandsire to a child of the Light. A leader, I knew, who’d kill my daughter all the more quickly because of it.

“Oh, your expression is priceless!” She laughed gaily, a sound like tiny bells chiming in the spring winds, before pretending to sober. “Though you should check it. I doubt your sister ever wore such a serious expression.”

I pulled my gaze from her if only to hide the tumult inside, but looking at my image confirmed she was right. Olivia’s eyes had always been bright blue—open, smiling, and trusting. Mine were light enough to look honeyed in the right light, a soft shade of brown Regan had very nearly duplicated, but they’d always deepened when I was angry. Right now they were flashing like polished jet in an expression that was as petrified and bright as the diamonds at my ears and fists. The earrings had been a gift from Xavier Archer, Olivia’s father, and the man I once thought was also mine. But the eyes were from my real father, the Shadow leader, the being who either wanted me to belong to him or wanted me dead.

I waited to speak until I was steady enough to control my voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I don’t know little Ashlyn’s adopted surname, or where she ended up all those years ago, but it shouldn’t take too long to find out. And even if it does, I don’t mind waiting for the onset of her second life cycle.” I opened my mouth, but she held up the hand with the detonator and shook her head. “Uh-uh-uh. Remember, I’m watching you too. And right now I’m going to watch you walk away with your tail tucked, while I enjoy a romantic two-step with your boyfriend.”

I knew I was losing the battle for self-control when Regan’s delicate nostrils widened, a sign that my natural pheromones were flaring, but I couldn’t help it. My options were swiftly disappearing. Regan watched my face, drinking in the emotions she caught passing there, and as if thirsting for more, she leaned forward on the counter, gaze piercing mine through the mirror. “It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? Continue stalking us, and you risk pissing me off so much, I may snap and take it out on your childhood crush. Stop, and he might outlive his usefulness. Nothing to keep me from killing him…or making him wish he was dead.”

I was clenching my jaw so tight my teeth ached.

“But, no. I’m not entirely without needs of my own, so I think I’ll fuck him first.” She tilted her head, and her pretty smile widened. “I’ll make sure those listening devices are working properly so you can get off too.”

I reached for her with a speed that still surprised me. Regan yelped, whirling and dodging as her glyph smoked hot on her chest, the realization she’d pushed too far stark on her face.

My
face, I corrected mentally, and plowed a fist into it.

We were two opposing agents in our prime, and the fight was evenly matched, though it’d be a blur to mortal eyes, which is why the woman entering the restroom didn’t register our presence until a stool crashed through the wall behind her, imbedded there like an oversized thumbtack. She also had to be severely inebriated. She stood in place, staring at the stool as the whistling and howling of wind—our blows and battle cries in flight—accompanied a blur of motion so fast, it was like a dust devil had landed inside. I rushed Regan, continuing forward when I should’ve stopped, launching up her body like it was a climbing wall to send a knee flying into her skull. She face-planted into the mirror she’d been sneering into only moments before, which gave me time to reach the mortal’s side, gently pick her up, and deposit her back outside the restroom. Regan wouldn’t hesitate to use her life as leverage, and I couldn’t give the bitch an opportunity to harm anyone else.

“Keep guard,” I told the woman, and waited for her dazed nod before the door swung shut. I turned around…

And had my stomach caved in by a driving skull. My ribs wrapped around my spine and the door splintered behind me so the yelp from the other side seeped through the cracks, but I was too busy learning to breathe again to worry about spillover into the mortal world. I was also pretty concerned about the ice pick arching toward the large artery in my neck.

“Fuck,” I breathed, my glyph lighting in response to her conduit. Regan smiled.

Leaving my aching ribs exposed, I crisscrossed my arms against her weapon hand, and paid for it with a knee in my gut. My breath whooshed from me again, but I latched on to lift her wrists, reared back, and head-butted her. Twice.

Her arms went slack, my fingers scrambled; her hands wobbled, mine tightened, and the ice pick popped into the air like a champagne cork. One final swipe on my part sent it skittering across the sitting room and under the line of stalls. We both growled snaking sounds of fury and frustration, and redirected our assault.

An admittedly lucky left jab had Regan backpedaling, and I was back on her in two strides, a low kick connecting with her thigh, causing the muscles to contract in the mother of all charley horses. It was a tide-turning injury, and we both knew it. Regan’s retreat was so fast, she looked like a spider scuttling away on too few limbs. I was just as fast, and had her…until sound erupted like a flash flood, waves of it careening over us both. We doubled over where we stood, hands pressed to the sides of our heads in a humorless parody of Munch’s
The Scream
.

I tried to focus on Regan, but the narrow canals of my ears were closing up on me, like the cabin of a plane suddenly losing pressure. I cried out in pain, in silence, knowing what this was. This was stark elemental chaos, atoms and molecules compressed beyond anything this reality could hold, and the explosion of sound was as magnificent as an asteroid collision in space.

Except this sound wasn’t set to a frequency in a galaxy far, far away. It was in a Las Vegas bathroom, next to me, all around me.
In
me. Someone—someone strong—was fucking with the vibration of matter.

I tensed in anticipation of the final concussion. Paranormal turmoil operated on a different wavelength than normal matter, its pulse detectable only by those equipped to hear it. So it was a good thing no one entered the bathroom just then, because Regan and I would have looked mighty strange writhing in the perceived silence. But instead of winnowing away like regular sound waves, the tremor swelled, similar to the bubbles blooming over the heads of comic book characters, and not by coincidence. Those who were supernatural could sense the forming of that bubble, the crest between the waves making up the vibration, the enormous size of its pressurized core.

And this was a big motherfucker.

A high-pitched whine wheeled through the air, refusing to be absorbed before oxygen dropped from the room, the city, and then the earth. Then the accompanying pop ruptured the void, ricocheting off my eardrums like a puncturing jab, and the collapsing vacuum ate my scream.

There was nothing but a low-grade buzzing for a good thirty seconds. I used the blissful silence to regain my equilibrium, trusting Regan was doing the same. My hearing returned on a single note, like the pluck of an untuned guitar string, and marked the ebb of the invisible tsunami of sound. It receded degree by degree, and when it was finally gone, Regan and I both straightened. Breathing hard, staring at each other across a distance of no more than a jab, we inhaled deeply.

The air was chalky and static, and sapped the moisture from my tongue as I tried to taste the highs and furrows created on the shocked air. Scent was equally obliterated, at least for a few seconds more, and then a sour putridity crept into the room. Regan’s tensed shoulders dropped, and she found her smile again.

“What? Did you think we’d never fight back?”

The statement, and the stench, made it clear one of Regan’s allies had done this. Somehow he, she, or they had punched a hole through the plane between realities, and it was my job—mine and my troop’s—to fix it before the human element noticed. However, that wasn’t what had my response catching in my throat.

It was clear from her words that Regan thought the recent series of vibrational outbursts had been caused by the agents of Light. They hadn’t—and we hadn’t been able to detect a source on the damaged air—but I wasn’t about to tell her that. And I needed to go. This explosion was bigger than anything Regan threatened to make.

“No more bombs,” I told her. “Or I’ll send you to a place where hellfire feels like a spa treatment.”

“And I’ll bring Ben along as my cabana boy.”

She surprised me then by retrieving her conduit and leaving first, without another word, but as I surveyed the shattered mirrors, the upended furniture, and the holes in the walls and door, my eyes fell on something tiny and girly and black. I picked up her compact, flipping it in my palm before pocketing it.

Then I left to find out what exactly was ripping at the fabric of our world.

I was surprised, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been, to see the man as soon as I exited the bar. He was leaning against my black Porsche, dark eyes trained on me, and I sighed as I picked my way around the weeds and broken beer bottles scarring the dilapidated parking lot, gravel making little popping noises under my feet. Hunter Lorenzo, weapons master and fellow member of Zodiac troop 175, waited unmoving.

He normally wore tinted glasses when out about town, but had removed them in deference to the night. His hair was growing out—it was about the same length as Ben’s now—but he sported a five o’clock shadow, which meant, though it was Wednesday, it was his weekend free from his cover job in security at the Valhalla Casino. Though not overly groomed, he was impossibly good-looking, and if you didn’t know him, you might think he spent an hour in front of the mirror each morning.

Not that I should talk.

Not the same, I told myself as I flipped a curl over my shoulder. This silicone and self-tan and impossible
blondeness
hadn’t been my choice of urban camouflage. My sister’s appearance had been forced upon me.

“How long have you been here?” I asked as I came to a stop in front of him.

“Almost as long as you.”

I crossed my arms, looking up at him. “I almost got my ass kicked back there. Why didn’t you come in?”

He quirked one dark brow. “Because I don’t drink watered-down beer or date horses.”

I tilted my head. “You mean you ceased to have my back against one Shadow warrior—”

“And a bar full of twenty-first-century wannabe wranglers.”

“—just because you didn’t think you fit in?”

“I
don’t
fit in,” he said, wincing now. “Not unless I black out some teeth.”

“Snob.” He was joking, but I knew Hunter well enough to know his tastes ran to classical rather than country. In fact, in some ways I knew this man even better than the one I’d left inside that bar. Ben and I shared history, but Hunter and I had shared magic. We’d never sat down for a so-where-are-you-from? sort of discussion, but by once trading a soft-stream essence of breath tinged with a power known as the aureole, I’d seen into his soul.

We’d agreed to forget about this unearned intimacy, but that hadn’t prevented Hunter from popping up on my mental radar in bright, jarring blips. I knew he felt the same. I could sense when his thoughts snagged on me as well…and it was a knowledge that wanted to burrow through my body, take up warm residence somewhere between my belly and pelvic bone, and part my thighs. It wasn’t helping matters that Hunter seemed to be reconsidering our platonic pact, as evidenced by his appearance now. He’d been watching out for me as plainly as I’d been watching out for Ben.

“How’d you know they were going to be there?” he said, pushing from the car to stroll to the passenger’s side.

How’d you know
I
was going to be there?
I wanted to say as I disengaged the alarm and climbed in. “I put a trace on Ben’s phone, surveillance software on his computer, and satellite on his house 24/7.” Olivia had been a self-taught computer genius, a skill set that’d been lost when I took over her identity. Fortunately, I had the resources of a casino heiress’s fortune at my disposal, and could buy as much information from her illicit contacts as I needed. The word in the underground was the hacker known as the Archer had gotten lazy, but the rumor was somewhat muted by great, flowing—and seemingly endless—stacks of green bills.

Hunter shot me an arched look as he shut the car door.

“What?” I asked defensively in the sudden, vacuumlike silence.

He tilted his head back, ostensibly to study the wide sky outside his window. “Have you ever stopped to think—”

“Not if I can help it,” I interrupted smartly, revving the engine. I already knew I wasn’t going to like the end of this rhetorical question.

“—that the fantasy of something, or someone, is often more vivid than the reality?”